https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/19/climate/wood-banks-winter-maine.htmlBy Marguerite Holloway<br>Photographs by George Etheredge<br><strong>Marguerite Holloway and George Etheredge traveled to Maine to see how climate change is affecting wood banks there.</strong><br>Published Feb. 19, 2021Updated Feb. 20, 2021<br>ORLAND, MAINE — The cluster of a dozen or so houses in rural Maine could be a summer camp closed for the winter. The compound has an eclectic, informal feel, with colorful hand-painted signs and stained glass, pottery, and woodworking studios. It was quiet on a bright, cold winter morning. Except for the line outside the food pantry, and the cars pulling in to leave small passengers at child care.<br>The site, a resource center for low-income and homeless families called H.O.M.E., was founded in 1970 by a small band of Carmelite nuns. They cleared forest with Norwegian Fjord Horses and set up a crafts-making operation for the local community and a gift shop — and then a child-care center, a shelter program, an auto repair garage, a saw mill, a shingle mill, a garden and a greenhouse, a GED program, a food co-op that has become a food bank, and a home-construction unit.<br>During a bitter winter a few years ago, the organization added another community service: a wood bank. Employees at H.O.M.E, which stands for Homeworkers Organized for More Employment, had noticed that some firewood had been disappearing at night from outdoor sheds. And Tracey Hair, the executive director, started hearing about households with children and without heat. “Folks were needing firewood yesterday,” Ms. Hair said. “That’s when Clint started to rattle my cage about starting a wood bank.”<br>Clint Clagett, who runs all things wood at the organization, and Ms. Hair had nowhere to live when they came to H.O.M.E many years ago. Both have become leaders at the place that took them in. Both know cold.
